Alliance Space Guard (a 3D spacesim with orbits and ship avionics!)

[Cody]

Looking good, amigo!

[Pinback]

Nice on DC, love that station design.

[Cody]

ASGARD (Alliance Space Guard Advanced Research Directorate) - Home of the Gods?

[D.C.Elington]

@cody excellent
There's a lot of potential with the ship names too! (My thanks to Her Majesty's Royal Navy by the way )

[sscadmin]

Nice work thus far @d-c-elington, heh I want to see a NPC craft dock in real time to see how they do.... I know that will be a lot of trial and error testing there. And cannot wait to see your 'traffic scheduler' in action, that is really gonna make things come alive in your demo.

[D.C.Elington]

Posted by: @sscadmin
a lot of trial and error

Indeed That's when one needs to remember the golden rule of "agile" dev: one problem at a time!

[D.C.Elington]

Hi SSC,
The work on the NPC traffic is going on (focused on the Orbital Traffic Control system right now). Meanwhile here's a little update about the updated external view and radio chatter.
Cheers!

[Cody]

Loving this, DC!

[Pinback]

Love a bit of space chatter in games always think it gives the game some atmosphere, but not every one like it so it's good to see that you can just turn it off.

[D.C.Elington]

Ah yes and listening to the chatter actually takes one comms slot out of twelve! But I was thinking it could be made a bit more useful, so talking to ships could help the crew morale and/or give "insight points" to be used in missions: when wondering about which nearby ship to go intercept and inspect for instance.

[Cody]

Posted by: @d-c-elington
I was thinking it could be made a bit more useful, so talking to ships could help the crew morale and/or give "insight points" to be used in missions

Straight out of an Oolite mission:

Oh dear me yes. A frightful rogue with what I believe you people call a lead posterior shot up lots of beastly pirates...

[D.C.Elington]

Hum that makes me think the comms with ships should include "small talk", besides the more straight to the point mission related options. But everything in its time, these days I'll be banging my head against the Orbital Traffic Control coconut

[Cody]

Posted by: @d-c-elington
that makes me think the comms with ships should include "small talk"

Done right, a little banter, some friendly piss-taking, is always welcome.

[D.C.Elington]

Hello SSC,
Sorry for the radio silence I was fighting with "Orbital Traffic Control", and TBH my nose is still a bit bloody for it

The traffic itself is not in place yet as it seemed more effective to define flying rules first, but that will be the main task from now on.
Fly safe
David

[Cody]

Awesome!

[sscadmin]

Nice update @d-c-elington, I guess I should take more lessons from you you don't take any crap from pilots not following procedures for docking/getting fuel at SSC
One question, I know your doing a demo of some of the functionality and slowing it down to explain. But in real time if I was approaching the station how long from entering the 'Flaring Zone' to docking with the station take?

[D.C.Elington]

@sscadmin as a matter of fact it was my first programming experience with an "agent" that/who may just ignore the sent instructions!
And so that "non cooperative" status is just a first step and OTC should become more capable as new features get added.
About the "taxi" time from the flare to the docking port: that depends on the "traffic level" for the procedure. I wanted a bit of diversity and more importantly to avoid annoying the player with convoluted paths for no reason, so:
- with no active traffic at the station: 1 direct path to the entry of the docking corridor + docking, maybe 1 minute with time acceleration
- some traffic but not in the same procedure: 1 step to the "z-plane" (= vertical slice at the docking port altitude) then a second one at constant altitude to the docking corridor. Maybe 2 minutes
- traffic in the same procedure: that's the whole shebang through the "arrival holding stack" and "lifts" with 4 steps. Maybe 3 minutes.
And of course ships may have to "hold" in place while waiting for the next step to be clear of traffic. But that also can be skipped with time acceleration and OTC will prompt you to go with a dedicated message (and automatically reset to x1 time rate).
(P.S. since there is no actual traffic yet the procedure is temporarily set based on the station's size.)

[Pinback]

Awesome DC
Just thinking that you should have a space trucking mode, if it does not already have it.

[D.C.Elington]

Posted by: @pinback
Just thinking that you should have a space trucking mode, if it does not already have it.

I was wondering about the dev roadmap actually. The next two steps are a sure thing: NPC Traffic (1st pass) and Ship Systems (2nd pass to complete them). After that I was initially planning to work on the sensors but the more it goes the more I think it's high time to start gamifying and implement the basics of the career and missions system. And so these would in-effect start with space trucking runs!

[sscadmin]

Posted by: @d-c-elington
NPC Traffic (1st pass)

Least in your recent demo it would have been great seeing all of the NPCs doing their own thing and the station interacting with them and you. But I am sure that is tough from a logic standpoint